When the moon is full they say people come unhinged. This is the basis for the etymology of the word Lunatic. Apparently, emergency rooms at the hospital schedule extra staff on the dates of the full moon based on the phenomenon.
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As a younger person, at night, I watched the moon move across the sky. I did not watch it constantly. I went out onto the front porch and looked at it, then a little later, I went back out and looked again. I repeated the action four or five times over several hours. I did it intentionally so that, the following day, I could say, “Last night, I was watching the moon move across the sky.” I thought it sounded romantic.
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I like the moon. I am not in love with the moon. However, I do love it. In a way, I love almost everyone I know and most of those I do not know. So when I say I love the moon, do not freak out.
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When I first saw the moon, I mean, not just as an object in the night sky, but face-to-face, I felt a bell ring inside of me. It was like a clear and bright sound vibration coming from inside my chest, and perhaps also like a tuning when the two disparate sounds meet at the point of euphony, with the added quality of a subtle wake-up alarm.
Ding!
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When I told the moon about the bell inside of me, it said, “Well, I suppose we should explore this attraction.”
And that is how it began.
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I said this to the moon, I said, “I am not a fan. I don’t want to be a fan. I want to know you.” (Between you and me, I have begun to wonder if the moon is perhaps unknowable.)
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Once I had a dream that I was sitting across from the moon at a small square table. As we sat across from one another, I sewed small, black, silk-covered buttons onto a piece of black silk that was covering the table. I was sewing them in close clusters so that the fabric was becoming very densely covered with the buttons. The moon, gesturing flamboyantly over my handy work, asked me, “What are you doing?” Looking up from my needle and thread, I answered, “I am making constellations.”
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The first time I kissed the moon, for the first minute or two, I was afraid there was no chemistry between us.
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I guess one could say our relationship is long-distance.
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The moon is often distant and insensitive. I try not to take it personally.
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Last time the moon came to visit, it sat across the room from me all evening. I sat on the sofa knitting and the moon sat in the rocking chair. After a couple of hours of talking and listening to records, finally, placing my project on the table and patting the sofa, I said, “Do you want to sit by me?” The moon, rising from its chair, sheepishly said, “Yes, I was just afraid I would disrupt your knitting.” As you can see, even after all this time, there is a shyness and awkwardness between us.
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The moon is not particularly warm and is also not what one would call sweet. Since being together, I find that I have begun to crave and eat candy much more regularly than before. My favorite is Giant Chewy SweeTarts®.
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When I was a little girl if someone had asked me what was the opposite of the moon, I would have said, with confidence, “The sun.” Today, I might say, with less conviction, “A tea cup.”
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The moon does not laugh out loud, but sometimes chuckles under its breath. This subtle chuckle happens only in response to something the moon itself has said.
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I have said that I like it. I should also say that I am fascinated and excited by the moon.
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This might sound arrogant, but, until now, I have never been in a relationship with anyone that I thought was smarter then me.
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Once a month, the moon disappears for about 3 days. I don’t see or hear from it during this time and have never been given any explanation or excuse. I don’t ask a lot of questions because I think the moon should do its own thing, but, honestly, the first few times it happened I felt like a wounded animal. The first day I was okay, but impatient. The second day I was anxious. By the third day I was laying on the floor, keening as if I’d been shot. The effects of this disappearance have been tempered by time and repetition.
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They say that the tides of the earth’s oceans rise due to the moon’s attraction.
Everybody knows the human body is made up of 98% water.
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To be honest, there are times when I feel like I have imagined this whole thing. Made it up. But then I remember all of the things the moon has said to me and I count up all of the little messages and the visits and the nights we’ve spent together. The task of going over all of the verifiable details gives me solace, but it does not give me satisfaction.
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A few times a week, usually when I have a day off from work, I ascend the stairs of my home in the late afternoon just as the sun enters the western sky and shines through the window of the second story landing. In the window, I have hung a prism and several chandelier crystals and as I walk up, at this particular point in the afternoon, the walls and ceiling are dappled with countless dancing rainbow points. The experience of seeing these ebullient spectrums as I make my way to my bedroom is a dear pleasure, a quiet elation, but also strikes me with exquisite loneliness. I know that the moon will never share this moment with me.
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I know a good many facts about the moon and know things about it that it has not personally shared with me including subtleties of its character and its cycles. This is because the moon is very well known, a celebrity by most standards, and I’ve looked it up on the Internet. I did not know much about the moon before we met, other than the obvious facts, but now I have read articles and studies about it. I have seen videos, photographs and diagrams. I have studied its Astrology and history. I have read poems and listened to songs that take it as their subject matter. There are things one can glean from all of this information. But it is not the same as knowing the moon.
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For obvious reasons I don’t talk much about my relationship with the moon.
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When asked about my own astrological make-up I say, “I have a Libra sun and Gemini rising, and my moon is in Aquarius.” As I say the last part, I take time to hold each word on my tongue as I blink slowly so as to fully enjoy the use of the possessive pronoun allowed me in this context.
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I am much too self-conscious to casually say things like, “The moon said…” or “When the moon came over…” I am afraid I will seem like I am bragging or, worse yet, that people will think that I am a star-fucker. Even my closest friends do not know the full extent of my relationship with the moon.
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Sex with the moon is almost impossible to describe. Admittedly, I am too shy and embarrassed to try very hard. However, I will say this of the sex, it is very much like a chorus of bells ringing all at once in a deep reverberating cacophony.
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The moon says this of the sex, “Frankly, I could take it or leave it.”
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The moon enjoys being the center of attention and is very comfortable being gazed upon.
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They say the moon always turns the same face toward the earth.
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The moon is tender and parental in its sporadic displays of affection. Once, as I was preparing to leave a party, I accidentally caught the edge of my scarf in the zipper of my coat. The moon stopped me and said, “Oh no, you’ve caught your scarf.” The moon then delicately unzipped my coat to free the scarf, pulled the fabric aside, re-zipped the front of my coat and buttoned the storm flap, finally fluffing and fussing with my scarf around my neck to bolster me for the impending cold.
Sometimes, the moon looks at me and says, “Look at that, you’ve put together a good life for yourself. Good job!” Or says, in a knowing, advice-like way, “Enjoy life!” For a time these exclamations of general approval seemed condescending, but now I see that this is just its way. The moon shines its light on the obvious.
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I am mostly resigned to the stable, unchanging quality of our romance. There will always be a measured, deliberateness to our interactions. I have longed for more, but found that it is pointless to ask and it is pointless to argue.
I have only two choices when it comes to asserting power over the course of our relationship. I can turn toward the moon, or I can turn away.
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According to science, the moon is, all at once, slowly moving away from the earth because of the angular momentum of their relationship, while its distance from the earth decreases because of the complex interaction of the sun, the moon and the earth. I am not jealous of these other relationships that hold such sway over the moon. And I do not intellectually understand the anomaly, but I can feel it. It feels like the subtle vibration of a bell at the center of my chest.
